Bill Nye, The Restraining Order Guy

Beakman must have been overjoyed this week to learn that arch-rival and Tucker Carlson of government-required childrens educational programming Bill Nye was undergoing severe marital and legal problems. Beakman always was one for Shadenfreude; he used to beat off while Lester mopped the lab.

Giant rats and masturbation aside, Nyes ordeal is pretty spectacular. He surprised his girlfriend with a spontaneous wedding, then when he found out the marriage license wasnt valid, decided to call the whole thing off. You know, because the mild hassle of getting some paperwork refiled sort of kills the whole true love thing.

According to Nye, THIS happened next:

Nye says his distraught ex-wife-that-never-was poured a toxic liquid into the garden behind the house they both owned, a substance Tindall later said was weed killer. Nye took out a restraining order against her. He says she was "dressed in black and wearing a black hat" and "she fled on foot when I called her name."

There was an allegation that Tindall intended to throw poison onto Nye's face or sprinkle it in his eyes.

Once youre done cackling at the mental image of Bill Nye getting poison sprinkled in his eyes, try and appreciate how awesome some of the finer points of this set-up are: Nyes ex dressed up as the black spy from Spy vs. Spy, Nye weeping over his beloved roses, and Tindall the concert oboist loping off through the suburb, bottle of empty poison in her sinister black-gloved hand.

I also cant get over how Nye treats the whole thing like an experiment on his show. Upon investigating the herbicide, he reportedly concluded that is was quite toxic, and could have theoretically soaked into his vegetable garden and then gotten into his food. I assume he deduced this by setting up a control garden and treating a series of test gardens with various levels of the poison. Yay science!

Now all it needs is some wailing electric guitar and wacky sound effects to keep the kids entertained and its ready for the KPBS afternoon block: